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Miami Heat quest fuels bumper NBA ratings

Self-styled superteam ignites interest in 2011 basketball playoffs

By

SamMamudi

NEW YORK (MarketWatch) — Being despised may not be so bad, after all. True, the Miami Heat failed to win the NBA title, but at least they’re tops when it comes to fan interest.

A year after building a superteam meant to win a championship at the first try, the Heat has become basketball’s version of the New York Yankees or Dallas Cowboys — a cultural juggernaut that polarizes fans and brings in bumper ratings.

Reuters

The Heat's LeBron James (from right to left), Mike Miller and Mike Bibby watch their team struggle in the fourth quarter of Game 6 of the finals.

Sunday’s Game 6 pulled in almost 23 million viewers, 31% more than last year’s marquee Game 6 matchup between the Los Angeles and Boston Celtics, according to Nielsen Co. data. (The 2010 final went seven games.)

It’s clear most were tuning in to watch the Heat: In the two months of the playoffs, the Heat were mentioned about 330,000 times on such consumer media sites as Facebook and Twitter, as well as on blogs and message boards, said Nielsen. That compares with 140,000 mentions of the Dallas Mavericks.

On Monday, the day after the Mavs won the championship, the Heat had about 18,500 mentions, compared with roughly 13,500 for Dallas. Miami’s LeBron James, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh were mentioned about 32,000 times, while Dallas players Dirk Nowitzki, Jason Kidd and Jason Terry were mentioned just over 16,000 times.

The three most-watched series of this year’s playoffs all featured the Heat: the NBA Finals; the Eastern Conference Finals, against the Chicago Bulls; and the conference semifinals, against the Boston Celtics. Those series were boosted by matchups with big-market teams from Boston and Chicago, but even the Heat’s first-round five-game downing of the Philadelphia 76ers outstripped other tie-ups, with the exception of the Celtics against the New York Knicks and the Lakers’ closely fought six-game series against the New Orleans Hornets.

The good news for the NBA is that the Heat’s loss could bring fans back next year as the championship quest continues.

“A rising tide lifts all boats, and the Heat has made fans more interested in the NBA in general,” said Leah LaPlaca, who oversees NBA programming on Disney’s
DIS, -1.16%
ESPN and ABC.

LeBron stays on top

The attention on the Heat is far from uniformly positive, of course. Many fans object to James’s teaming up with Wade and Bosh, seeing his off-season move from Cleveland to Miami as an easy route. A team press conference last summer featuring holdover Wade and introducing signees Bosh and James resembled a rock concert, and comments from the trio about winning multiple titles didn’t endear them to many NBA followers beyond South Florida, either.

But whatever fans may feel toward the Heat — and James in particular — his marketing appeal is undimmed.

“There’s plenty of brands out there that want to be associated with the attention he brings,” said Dan Parise, account director at Scout Sports and Entertainment, a division of Horizon Media, which counts Capital One Financial Corp.
COF, -0.48%
and Geico among its clients.

James’s unpopularity is for sporting reasons — unlike golfer Tiger Woods, he hasn’t committed any known personal indiscretions. And, unlike many tarnished athletes, he hasn’t broken any laws. “He’s done nothing to make people question his moral compass,” said Parise.

“There’s always been fans who hate teams they see as trying to buy a championship or take a shortcut there, but the NBA has done a pretty good job of putting James out there as one of the faces of the league, and that won’t change.”

James’s Heat jersey was the top-selling jersey over the season.

As James’s title hunt goes on, perhaps the only thing that can stop fans from tuning in will be a work stoppage due to a labor-talks breakdown.

Like the National Football League, the NBA is currently in talks with its players union about a new collective-bargaining agreement. Unlike the NFL, the NBA is losing money — Commissioner David Stern recently said that the league as a whole loses about $300 million a year and that 22 of the 30 franchises lose money.

Highlighting the problems facing the league: The champion Mavs have the third-highest NBA payroll, at $103 million, including a luxury-tax payment, despite the fact that the league’s salary cap — a so-called soft cap, unlike the NFL’s — is $58 million.

“There are two key issues,” said an NBA official who spoke to MarketWatch on condition of anonymity. “We need to reduce our overall player costs, and we need to create a system where all teams can compete for a championship.”

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